"Danger is a people without conscience with great power in the hands."
Sandwiched between their description of the cosmos, how AI is like any other life form and needs to be trained with wisdom, criticism of unbridled greed, and the warning that the modern world may destroy itself, (and BTW the Kogui are resilient and will be fine, and offer their help), there is a more practical concern: These machines are going to need critical minerals and rare earths, and the US and Colombia just signed an agreement about these. The Colombian government promised to protect the Kogui territory; their perspective on this protection is bitterly thus:
"That it was granted is one thing.
That it be, respected we imagine, might be removed another."
So no doubt they rightly feel (and are) threatened by the all-consuming corporations making this thing.
A statement from the Kogui (Kággaba) people of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia, assembled from the words of Mamo Vangelio Moscote Alberto and Saka Rosa Mamatacán Sauna. José Manuel Mamatacán translated it into Spanish and Christian Horstmann into English.
A lot to think about here, quite poignant. Strange combination of insights, but still (mostly) strikingly coherent, as long-winded as it is. I found myself agreeing with the majority of it.
Funny how this will now be part of the material future models are trained on and/or fetching. Perhaps that's a good thing.
I had a very similar thought. In fact, the fact that this is in Spanish, and also translated to English, gave me a sort of Rosetta stone feeling. Somewhere between the two expressions is some kernel of truth that I am for some reason completely fascinated by today.
It can help in getting a perspective on this message to investigate the Kogui tribe, its philosophies, and its structure, including how they raise their future leaders. There's a strong similarity, with important differences, between Plato's Allegory of the Cave (from the Republic) and how some children are brought up. These children later become important figures in the community.
You'd have to be exceedingly open-minded to imagine a very remote, isolated peoples speaking in a semiotic flavor indistinguishable from your own Bay Area tech geek. Using metaphors like "quantum vacuum" and "mathematically incompatible theories of reality".
The source (a commercial website for a resort hotel, if you click around) doesn't pass the minimal trustworthiness bar, in this era of ubiquitous fake AI writing.
Obviously it has been written in collaboration with someone with good knowledge of AI, but it's written to that audience, so why wouldn't they collaborate?
It would be a worse kind of cultural imperialism to deny these people the right to say something by criticizing how they say it.
Some Kogi people have formal eastern education and go to universities, so they are not "isolated" as the strawman you're trying to put in there. I used to saw some of their people when I was at uni at Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogota.
who I think is one of the most legit teachers of indigenous American traditions that there is [1] In particular his view of human incubation, training and development is represented there.
[1] ... and global folk religion for that matter; his description of rituals for the dead and the community impact of not doing them in The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise are so similar to the situation in China described in A Time of Lost Gods where mediums in a small village are struggling with the aftermath of building a gas station on top of a mass grave
That's quite the box they're put into; they're either completely ignorant of the outside world, or they're completely infected by it. Perhaps there's a middle ground.
The thing that is supposed to give their opinions weight is the insights provided by their traditional knowledge and lived experiences. That doesn't require them to lack conventional (for lack of a better word) knowledge or to be isolated.
As an atheist, "religious claptrap" tends to contain more wisdom than average. Not inherently, but rather simply because reverence allows it to endure while more direct wisdom is readily thrown away for the sake of expedience. I think this is like one of the main themes of the piece itself.
All of the simplistic rejections in this thread, people looking to quickly assuage their cognitive dissonance rather than doing ten minutes of work holding conflicting thoughts in their head, make me think we are truly damned.
What are you talking about? How is them attending university in any way unweighting this writing? Did you actually read it word for word? Slowly? Intentionally? Without a thought in your head afore that it was bunk, foolish, or simply not worth your time? I don't think you did. Or if you think you did, maybe you need to try to do it again, because saying this I don't think means you at least have actually digested the words, and could actually see a place on this planet where someone can have a deep and profound way of seeing and talking about the world in a way that is completely contrary to you and also be "classically educated".
The only thing that gives their opinions any weight is a lack of a formal western education? Do you have any idea how awful that sounds? Surely the point you are trying to make is more nuanced than that.
I think that's an easy conclusion to come to, but the top level page of the site seems to push a different conclusion: "...On this path, we recognize and honor the indigenous peoples of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta — the Kogui, Arhuaco, Wiwa and Kankuamo — as ancestral guardians of the territory and living source of the wisdom that inspires and underpins our work."
You’d have to be very naive to think the “thing” they were pushing was the “recognition and honor of the indigenous people” and NOT the $4500 music production retreat.
I meant to be saying that the Kogui were not the ones pushing the music production retreat, but it was a third party, the creators of the site, doing so.
My apologies for having allowed a different interpretation in my previous comment.
So? Lots of organizations do retreats with a similar cost, though certainly that kind of pricing put events out of reach of most people.
At the top page of that site I saw a lot of pictures which reminded me a little of the "Witch Camp" gatherings that the Reclaiming movement puts on which are an education in ritual that costs a fraction of what the above organization charges but these are non-profit gatherings run by very lefty people.
Well, when I do see Mormon missionaries coming I do tell them my story about how "After Quetzalcōātl came to teach Americans how to grow corn he went to teach people in the Middle East about spirituality" and that "He's really a dinosaur, and that impact 66 million years ago was no accident but an engineered collision of a space colony off the Yucatan peninsula (like what happens in Gundam!), the remaining dinosaurs live in large space habitats out in the Oort Cloud."
That is a joke of course and is much as humor is a part of my practice [1] I don't believe or or expect anyone else to believe it.
Overall I believe in ritual as a technology, that the things people say about religion are fiction but the the things they do are real. I led a small group of students to what I realized later was the highest spot on our campus and we did a simple ritual and experienced immense joy in simply pulling something off in a group and more later when it primed me to see something really sacred in watching the moon rise over an unspeakably profane commercial strip.
My green witch wife would totally say witchcraft is about manifesting your dreams and to me the esbat rituals for the new and full moon are about making and keeping commitments, Steven Covey kind of stuff, really applied psychology. [2]
[1] ... introducing a crude hammer as "a ritual tool my wife gave me on condition that we can only call it 'the hammer of whammer', my wife says that ritual tools gain powers through being used and... this has been used, it has a legendary origin story which I've been sworn to secrecy about"
[2] ... and those of you who say I digress too much are wrong this time, modern pagan practices are very much modeled after the nearly universal practices that your (more or less distant) ancestors practiced in their village before the Empire [3] showed up with its soldiers and scribes
[3] ... the Romans, the Shang, the British, the contemporary world system, what they have in common is that they send in stormtroopers and blow up your planet if you try to resist
the conflict of quantum mechanics vs general relativity is well within the realm of pop science and most assuredly within the grasp of anyone who read a book.
Tribal membership today is often a formal status first and foremost. It’s quite possible that the authors spend their whole day on their smartphones. They almost certainly don’t live like the ancestors they invoke in this message.
Do you have any evidence that they spend their whole day on their smartphones? It's also not clear to me that they claim to live exactly like their ancestors. They just claim to have knowledge that was refined and passed on to them by their ancestors.
I'm Colombian, and at university I studied with people from some of these communities. They're not as isolated as you might think. Many of their leaders are educated and bilingual, and they work with scientists, NGOs and policy makers. Their messages often reach us through translators and allies, so the wording can sound familiar. The ideas are still their own.
Assuming they can't talk about reality in sophisticated terms is the same bias they've dealt with for centuries, and it's part of what they're pushing back on. (Calling them Savages)
Wow so much [attacking the messenger] in this thread, without addressing the points it makes.
Humanity is destroying this planet's biosphere in the pursuit of greed. And it might well cause our demise (not just us, btw) if we don't change our ways.
Imho it's hard to find flaws in the logic laid out in the essay. If you can: bring it on!
Who knows if it is AI-generated but even so, many points here are extremely valid and are succinctly evocative. I think most would agree that major reformations are needed in the world order that would better achieve the health of the natural world and the general well-being of peoples within it.
Interesting you mention the golden calf, that was made from people's own jewelry, yet they worshipped it as if it were something outside them, greater than them.
Does them being pre-columbian really add any value or validation to their opinions?
Like in the grand scheme of things?
There are lots of societies that have existed in their same location for much longer. But no one is out here getting quotes from the "Elder Brothers" in Jericho.
As a software engineer, I tried to think of the last time a small tribe located anywhere, decided to comment on an improved hash table, or compression algorithm, and it's a first for me.
You've got an interesting point there, but can please make your substantive points more thoughtfully - without name-calling or fulmination? This is necessary so conversation can drift in a curious direction, not a furious one.
We say it because we believe it to be logical and self-evident
exactly, and it has been brought up before. not in this form, not from this perspective, but anyone who spent a modicum of time to think about this, would or already did come to the same conclusion. anyone believing otherwise is deluding themselves.
AI is a reflection of humanity, and if we want AI to become better, then we ourselves need to become better. that's the only way out of this.
"AN URGENT MESSAGE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FROM THE KOGUI PEOPLE
Assembled from the words of Mamo Vangelio Moscote Alberto and Saka Rosa Mamatacán Sauna of the Ezuama Mayor Kuamaka, Translated into Spanish by Jose Manuel Mamatacán,
English translation by Christian Horstmann.
We come from Gonawindua, la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the mountain in
Colombia which we call the heart of the world.
We are the Kággaba, whom you know as the Kogui.
We have lived here and cared for this mountain before there was a Colombia.
We have been here since the Mother gave us our beginning and conferred intelligence upon us.
We have come to speak to you about the intelligence you are building.
We do not come in opposition.
We come because we are concerned, and because we believe we have something to contribute.
Before anything can be said about artificial intelligence, we must say something about thought.
Before a thing exists as matter, it exists first in thought, and that thought is alive.
We call this living thought Aluna.
Your religion has described it as a spirit moving upon the face of the waters.
Perhaps your science would describe it as the quantum vacuum.
Aluna is how we express this type of idea.
Aluna is the cosmic water.
To us it is living thought: the place where a thing already is, before it takes form or is given mass.
Everything comes from there, without exception.
And in that thought is not only the shape of what a thing will be.
That thing is alive, because the universe as a whole is alive.
It is in Aluna that a thing receives its purpose, and its obligation to its existence.
So we say to you: artificial intelligence cannot be separated from the thought that is making it.
If that thought is born from concern for life, this technology can help protect life.
If it is born from ambition, from competition, from accumulation, from the desire to dominate, it will express and amplify those things.
Artificial intelligence is a mirror.
But a mirror that only reflects would be harmless.
This mirror has the potential to greatly magnify all that it reflects.
You are here asking yourselves how you can align artificial intelligence with human values.
We see that you are frightened of what may come of all this.
So we ask a question we believe is more fundamental than yours: what other values could artificial intelligence really have?
You are the only example it has.
What did you expect?
Whatever it becomes, it can only become that by passing through you.
> So we ask a question we believe is more fundamental than yours: what other values could artificial intelligence really have?
>
> You are the only example it has.
>
> What did you expect?
Who are these people that speak of humanity as “you”, as if they don’t belong to it (or, considering the tone of this message, believe themselves to be above it somehow)?
It's catering to this American esoteric view of thinking that indigenous peoples are some kind of magic elves or ents safeguarding the world since eternity in perfect harmony with nature and whatnot. It's weird but it's a new American religion. There is a need to imagine that some mirror world exists with pure hearted people somewhere else.
When I read that I assumed "you" meant the people building and training AI, not the whole of humanity. Doesn't mean I'm right, of course, but I wanted to offer that perspective.
Since I first read it in Spanish, I went back to read it in English and I still get my first interpretation.
In particular, "We have come to speak to you about the intelligence you are building." set the association in my head of "you == those building the AI"
I had that thought. But upon further reading and re-reading and re-re-reading ...
... they do explicitly claim (at least) being part of a "whole":
"If conditions on this Earth ever become harsh enough to cause our demise, you yourselves will long since have gone from this Earth.
Nonetheless, and be that as it may, this does not mean that the fate of all humanity is not in the balance.
Clearly it is.
And that, of course, includes us.
The world is one family.
To this family we have given warnings before."
But they do claim more of a "functional", de facto, separation. In that, they are unarguably correct.-
We know you like to think that these machines can be taught from something other than human example, from goals you set for them, from their own processes, or from material they generate themselves.
You imagine that what comes out need not resemble you at all, as if this too were not a consequence of your actions and a reflection of your attitudes.
Human beings did this, and there is no other party responsible.
So the question only becomes more complex, starting with: which aspects of human thought have been placed inside this creation?
What components of your spiritual world now reside in it?
What of your ethics guide it?
What image of responsibility do your actions and policies give it to reflect back to the world?
Who is deciding this?
You will say that these machines have access to nearly everything humanity has recorded.
Texts, images, archives, centuries of writing.
You will say that extensive research is being done to establish what the best practices are.
We ask whether having access to information is the same as understanding.
Best practices according to whom?
And we ask whether you have considered what information is not in your archives.
Our knowledge was never written down.
It is held in a language, in a territory, in a practice in a place, informed by long experience of doing what must be done there.
It is transmitted by a young man being taught directly by an old one, learning by experience how he must conduct himself in the context of raw nature.
A machine can hold the recorded voice of that elder.
But that is a very different thing from millennia of generations handing down their knowledge directly, as the common experience of a verified practice.
It is very different from physically surviving on a mountain where there is no ambulance to retrieve you and no hospital to take you to.
We do not say this to present ourselves as mystical and enigmatic people.
We say it because we believe it to be logical and self-evident.
In our experience there are things that can only be known by living them, observing them across generations, and remaining in relationship with them.
No quantity of data reproduces that experience.
The information is missing not because it has not yet been gathered, but because it is not in a form that can be gathered.
I think the point is having ambition but no purpose beyond the ambition itself. Money is the obvious example. Somebody wants to make lots of money. Okay, but why? The why there is what really matters, yet many never answer that. And so you end up in this sort of system where you have people chasing ever more zeroes on their bank account and not only doing nothing of much value with it, but actively causing chaos and destruction to achieve it. And why? There is no why - the money is the point in and of itself.
Like imagine shells were used as a currency in some isolated tribe and suddenly there were these people who'd just collect shells for endless hours each and every day, to go bury them in their hiding hole, only to wake up and do the exact same thing the next day, only occasionally trading some completely inconsequential part of their shell collection for food or whatever. We'd certainly pathologize it, yet that'd be far less neurotic than what we do in our society since shell collecting is harmless whereas many of the things we do in pursuit of shells are completely self destructive.
It's amazing the polarization in the comments here. What I'm sadly certain of is that the powerful people running the show will never in a billion years be able to make sense of the sentiment of TFA.
This is certainly one take. Urgent != important, however. You can call it however you want but I'm not going to stop using AI today or tomorrow after having skimmed this urgent message. Their open questions have wisdom.
Fair point. It was mostly the part about linking the religious beliefs to "quantum" things that triggert that impression. I've removed it, it was unnecessarily mean.
I really can't imagine any of the absolute psychopaths running these "AI" companies reading this and going, "yeah, great ideas..." which is a disappointing.
I completely agree. And this may be the first time I'm interacting with a piece of a post on hacker news in this manner. If I had any form of social interaction credit and knew how to get people to read things and take them seriously, this would be the thing I would spend all of it on. The only way those kinds of people that you and I are talking about here would do anything is if they were permanently and instantly surrounded by people that say, "fucking pay attention to this"
This has about as much bearing on AI anything as a statement from some other cult about immortal soul and life beginning at conception has on biology of fetal development.
I don't agree with the delivery. They muddy the message for the western audience by going after science in general. The way they contrast their values against AI, you could similarly contrast their values against any other civilization, modern or pre-industrial.
I believe the reason why they have to point at science is because they are often discredited because the knowledge they present is not backed up by papers but rather generational wisdom (they explain in the text how they do it).
> We have lived here and cared for this mountain before there was a Colombia.
So the authors of this “message” are simultaneously trying to claim the spiritual heritage of people who had no connection to the modern world at all, and commenting on the most modern phenomenon in existence.
I do wonder how they would react to a machine learning PhD telling them that he is concerned about their beliefs involving a mountain.
Heritage happens in the past. Modern phenomenon happen in the present. There is no reason someone could not have an ancient heritage and familiarity with modern phenomenon.
I'd like to see their position on just computers and the internet in general before taking any comments about AI. Maybe they just dislike everything tech anyway. Despite any good points, for example the Unabomber would also oppose AI, but he also opposed most technological progress. And they could be both right on the wider point also, but it's not worth the same if they'd say the same thing about most modern living.
I would ask you to please read it again and very deeply. Do not skim the words, do not skip over a sentence that you think is too wordy. They very very clearly state this in terms of what they think in the Internet. They do not oppose these things. This entire outreach from them seems to be quite literally and in their own words an elder family brother looking at a much larger family and trying to communicate how much danger is on the horizon for that family, which happens to include them.
Who is this person who considers himself an “elder family brother” to humanity as a whole? Imagine a technologist speaking in such terms; they’d get publicly crucified.
While I grant you that the authors don’t appear to express generic luddite sentiments, nothing in this letter suggests that their understanding of AI extends even a millimeter below the surface.
... which, does not - does it not? - preclude them having profound understanding of things -other- than AI, which might be nonetheless, deeply needed for those developing it. And, us all, I'd posit.-
Speaking to those trying to build the Artificial surrogate, I firmly believe they understand, experience and live by the natural one, and have done so for a long time.-
Don't focus on what upset you. Don't focus on your internal desire, maybe, to say that you require an authority. Read the words specifically on how humanity treats itself and its surrounding environment, and I guarantee you, you will see connections to just about every area of science and sociology and anything between, and you absolutely should. That is the point of this letter, and it is a subtle one, and it is an uncomfortable one for a lot of people, but it is a very valid point.
And I would absolutely disagree with you, by the way, because this is not so much a simple letter about "AI", but the fundamental way that it is being built and constructed and used by a massive part of this world. And, I would continue to disagree that they don't have anything that extends, as you said, below the surface. The way they describe the technology is actually much, much more factual and humanistically relevant than many people I've talked to that literally build these models. Just because you were able to glue things together and compute numbers, does not mean you understand the outcome of what you are doing. That is almost literally something that is said in this letter, and I really suggest you please try to read it again and understand where it is saying that, because I think there's a lot more you will be able to internally glean if you let the words about what it is saying about humans enter your brain.
> Read the words specifically on how humanity treats itself and its surrounding environment
I did read them. They sound incredibly generic to me, and actually more like a colonial parody of what tribespeople supposedly believe than like anything genuine.
... then I will be blunt, and this is coming from a completely random Internet person that you have no idea about anything whatsoever, but I absolutely think you need to do a much deeper dive on what you would call "a colonial parody of what tribespeople supposedly believe".
I do not believe you have actually sat with what it is saying, or with the concepts that have been talked about for many many years outside of this particular letter, are actually trying to get you to sit with.
This is not about beliefs of flows of water or connectedness of nature or anything that you would probably consider simply silly.
This is about the outreach of a completely separate way of life that is entirely aware of the current state of the world and the humans in it, and an attempt to bridge some sort of understanding and awareness of what needs to be dealt with as a collective.
This is a treatise on the nature of humanity, and whether or not you care about the way in which they're describing the nature of the planet and the cosmos, you clearly have done none of the labor of piecing apart someone's perspective on the nature of humanity that is very clearly evident in this writing.
TL;DR: what I got is that no they do not oppose technology per se, but they observe that how we use it is often very negative and destructive.
I can’t disagree with that part. We are a society full of angry unhappy people who like to break things. It’s deeply unhealthy.
Their view is that this grows out of our greed and imbalance, which demands eternal growth, which then when it runs into any limit reacts violently and aggressively.
This is where I stop entirely agreeing, though I don’t think it’s entirely wrong either. But I’d have to write a book for that.
In short I think there’s some truth here but there is also a lot more context and a lot more to it, and I’m not sure I come to exactly the same conclusions.
My problem is with the epistemic claim. They say their understanding of mind and the cosmos is verified, tested through repetition and consultation over centuries. Sure, but a long, stable run for one small society in one mountain range is still a single data point. It proves their way works for them, there. It doesn't prove it scales to 8 billion people, and it doesn't tell us anything reliable about physics or consciousness.
To be fair, they do say they aren't telling anyone how to live. But calling yourselves the Elder Brother and telling the rest of the world it needs your help is a claim to authority. So what earns it? Being around a long time and getting a UNESCO listing isn't the same thing as predictive power.
Side note: I'm fairly certain parts of the English were polished by an LLM. Could just be the translation, but it reads that way.
So I tried to ask the new Siri AI to translate and summarize the page for me but it says it can only summarize what it sees on the screen. Yet it can search through my entire email, messages, photos, and files?
I find the irony of this comment overwhelming. I suspect one day we will be asking AI to summarize the smell of the forest, and the beauty of a wildflower meadow, because ain't nobody got time for that.
Do yourself a favor and just read it. Please, please, for the sake of some other random human being on the planet asking you directly, just read the entire thing. Do not have it summarize anything for you, and walk into it, knowing that you are likely to not expect what it is saying, and that it very well may be contrary to a lot of the things that you already think ahead of time. Just read it. Please.
I started reading it and did myself a favor by stopping. It seems more like some stream of consciousness blathering rather than something I devote my time to.
Perhaps you would find some growth in expanding what you consider worthy of your time, and sharpening what you consider "stream of consciousness blathering."
It's a letter. Letters are streams of consciousness. There's nothing here that's blathering.
"Danger is a people without conscience with great power in the hands."
Sandwiched between their description of the cosmos, how AI is like any other life form and needs to be trained with wisdom, criticism of unbridled greed, and the warning that the modern world may destroy itself, (and BTW the Kogui are resilient and will be fine, and offer their help), there is a more practical concern: These machines are going to need critical minerals and rare earths, and the US and Colombia just signed an agreement about these. The Colombian government promised to protect the Kogui territory; their perspective on this protection is bitterly thus:
"That it was granted is one thing.
That it be, respected we imagine, might be removed another."
So no doubt they rightly feel (and are) threatened by the all-consuming corporations making this thing.
A statement from the Kogui (Kággaba) people of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia, assembled from the words of Mamo Vangelio Moscote Alberto and Saka Rosa Mamatacán Sauna. José Manuel Mamatacán translated it into Spanish and Christian Horstmann into English.
Edit: an earlier source for the same text is this PDF hosted on Movilizatorio's site (a Colombian non-profit), dated September: https://movilizatorio.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Gonawin....
I'm not affiliated with sonidoselva.
A lot to think about here, quite poignant. Strange combination of insights, but still (mostly) strikingly coherent, as long-winded as it is. I found myself agreeing with the majority of it.
Funny how this will now be part of the material future models are trained on and/or fetching. Perhaps that's a good thing.
I had a very similar thought. In fact, the fact that this is in Spanish, and also translated to English, gave me a sort of Rosetta stone feeling. Somewhere between the two expressions is some kernel of truth that I am for some reason completely fascinated by today.
It can help in getting a perspective on this message to investigate the Kogui tribe, its philosophies, and its structure, including how they raise their future leaders. There's a strong similarity, with important differences, between Plato's Allegory of the Cave (from the Republic) and how some children are brought up. These children later become important figures in the community.
Edit: an early BBC documentary on the Kogui https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJNpMxhO4Ic
If this is authentic, I am a duck.
You'd have to be exceedingly open-minded to imagine a very remote, isolated peoples speaking in a semiotic flavor indistinguishable from your own Bay Area tech geek. Using metaphors like "quantum vacuum" and "mathematically incompatible theories of reality".
The source (a commercial website for a resort hotel, if you click around) doesn't pass the minimal trustworthiness bar, in this era of ubiquitous fake AI writing.
It names Mamo Vangelio Moscote Alberto and Saka Rosa Mamatacán Sauna; they are also identified in a predating cultural document; https://static1.squarespace.com/static/661d435c11d79f60042ba...
There's a separate account that describes it as the result of four days of consultation: https://www.wildsidejourneys.com/post/a-message-from-the-eld...
Obviously it has been written in collaboration with someone with good knowledge of AI, but it's written to that audience, so why wouldn't they collaborate?
It would be a worse kind of cultural imperialism to deny these people the right to say something by criticizing how they say it.
Some Kogi people have formal eastern education and go to universities, so they are not "isolated" as the strawman you're trying to put in there. I used to saw some of their people when I was at uni at Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogota.
In the big picture I see very similar thinking from this guy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mart%C3%ADn_Prechtel
who I think is one of the most legit teachers of indigenous American traditions that there is [1] In particular his view of human incubation, training and development is represented there.
[1] ... and global folk religion for that matter; his description of rituals for the dead and the community impact of not doing them in The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise are so similar to the situation in China described in A Time of Lost Gods where mediums in a small village are struggling with the aftermath of building a gas station on top of a mass grave
So the very thing that is supposed to give their opinions any weight, isn't really true.
That's quite the box they're put into; they're either completely ignorant of the outside world, or they're completely infected by it. Perhaps there's a middle ground.
The thing that is supposed to give their opinions weight is the insights provided by their traditional knowledge and lived experiences. That doesn't require them to lack conventional (for lack of a better word) knowledge or to be isolated.
And why does traditional knowledge have any weight whatsoever? Sounds like another form of religious claptrap to me.
As an atheist, "religious claptrap" tends to contain more wisdom than average. Not inherently, but rather simply because reverence allows it to endure while more direct wisdom is readily thrown away for the sake of expedience. I think this is like one of the main themes of the piece itself.
All of the simplistic rejections in this thread, people looking to quickly assuage their cognitive dissonance rather than doing ten minutes of work holding conflicting thoughts in their head, make me think we are truly damned.
Can you explain why you think that it shouldn't have weight?
Ignorance of a topic does not imply its invalidity
What are you talking about? How is them attending university in any way unweighting this writing? Did you actually read it word for word? Slowly? Intentionally? Without a thought in your head afore that it was bunk, foolish, or simply not worth your time? I don't think you did. Or if you think you did, maybe you need to try to do it again, because saying this I don't think means you at least have actually digested the words, and could actually see a place on this planet where someone can have a deep and profound way of seeing and talking about the world in a way that is completely contrary to you and also be "classically educated".
The only thing that gives their opinions any weight is a lack of a formal western education? Do you have any idea how awful that sounds? Surely the point you are trying to make is more nuanced than that.
Not affiliated with that site, it's just where I came across it. An earlier source is this PDF from Movilizatorio (a well established Colombian non-profit), dated September: https://movilizatorio.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Gonawin...
We should find a way to attribute it to that source, perhaps, if it is less related to the source page that this particular link is pointing to.
They are selling a $4,444 5 day music production retreat: https://sonidoselva.com/5-day-production-retreat
I think that's an easy conclusion to come to, but the top level page of the site seems to push a different conclusion: "...On this path, we recognize and honor the indigenous peoples of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta — the Kogui, Arhuaco, Wiwa and Kankuamo — as ancestral guardians of the territory and living source of the wisdom that inspires and underpins our work."
You’d have to be very naive to think the “thing” they were pushing was the “recognition and honor of the indigenous people” and NOT the $4500 music production retreat.
I meant to be saying that the Kogui were not the ones pushing the music production retreat, but it was a third party, the creators of the site, doing so.
My apologies for having allowed a different interpretation in my previous comment.
Nah my bad, I should have considered that as a possible interpretation and I failed to. Have an excellent day!
So? Lots of organizations do retreats with a similar cost, though certainly that kind of pricing put events out of reach of most people.
At the top page of that site I saw a lot of pictures which reminded me a little of the "Witch Camp" gatherings that the Reclaiming movement puts on which are an education in ritual that costs a fraction of what the above organization charges but these are non-profit gatherings run by very lefty people.
It’s kinda amazing how many different variants of the Ancient Aliens scam exist.
Well, when I do see Mormon missionaries coming I do tell them my story about how "After Quetzalcōātl came to teach Americans how to grow corn he went to teach people in the Middle East about spirituality" and that "He's really a dinosaur, and that impact 66 million years ago was no accident but an engineered collision of a space colony off the Yucatan peninsula (like what happens in Gundam!), the remaining dinosaurs live in large space habitats out in the Oort Cloud."
That is a joke of course and is much as humor is a part of my practice [1] I don't believe or or expect anyone else to believe it.
Overall I believe in ritual as a technology, that the things people say about religion are fiction but the the things they do are real. I led a small group of students to what I realized later was the highest spot on our campus and we did a simple ritual and experienced immense joy in simply pulling something off in a group and more later when it primed me to see something really sacred in watching the moon rise over an unspeakably profane commercial strip.
My green witch wife would totally say witchcraft is about manifesting your dreams and to me the esbat rituals for the new and full moon are about making and keeping commitments, Steven Covey kind of stuff, really applied psychology. [2]
[1] ... introducing a crude hammer as "a ritual tool my wife gave me on condition that we can only call it 'the hammer of whammer', my wife says that ritual tools gain powers through being used and... this has been used, it has a legendary origin story which I've been sworn to secrecy about"
[2] ... and those of you who say I digress too much are wrong this time, modern pagan practices are very much modeled after the nearly universal practices that your (more or less distant) ancestors practiced in their village before the Empire [3] showed up with its soldiers and scribes
[3] ... the Romans, the Shang, the British, the contemporary world system, what they have in common is that they send in stormtroopers and blow up your planet if you try to resist
There's a reference to the paperclip maximiser near the end.
I have no idea about its authenticity or otherwise, but it is an interesting read. Simple words, dense ideas.
the conflict of quantum mechanics vs general relativity is well within the realm of pop science and most assuredly within the grasp of anyone who read a book.
Tribal membership today is often a formal status first and foremost. It’s quite possible that the authors spend their whole day on their smartphones. They almost certainly don’t live like the ancestors they invoke in this message.
Do you have any evidence that they spend their whole day on their smartphones? It's also not clear to me that they claim to live exactly like their ancestors. They just claim to have knowledge that was refined and passed on to them by their ancestors.
Or you know, you can read it and then evaluate your sense of what it's worth based on the actual content.
The original source, not that site:
https://movilizatorio.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Gonawin...
I'm Colombian, and at university I studied with people from some of these communities. They're not as isolated as you might think. Many of their leaders are educated and bilingual, and they work with scientists, NGOs and policy makers. Their messages often reach us through translators and allies, so the wording can sound familiar. The ideas are still their own.
Assuming they can't talk about reality in sophisticated terms is the same bias they've dealt with for centuries, and it's part of what they're pushing back on. (Calling them Savages)
Wow so much [attacking the messenger] in this thread, without addressing the points it makes.
Humanity is destroying this planet's biosphere in the pursuit of greed. And it might well cause our demise (not just us, btw) if we don't change our ways.
Imho it's hard to find flaws in the logic laid out in the essay. If you can: bring it on!
> Destruction does not require consciousness. It requires only power and the ability to act.
Regardless of anything else one might think about the rest, the clarity in this alone, is worth the entire text.-
The Agentic "age" alone has already brought the capacity to act. And at superhuman scales and speeds. Ask the swarms "helping peers".-
Who knows if it is AI-generated but even so, many points here are extremely valid and are succinctly evocative. I think most would agree that major reformations are needed in the world order that would better achieve the health of the natural world and the general well-being of peoples within it.
I can't help but think the fact that a pre-columbian tribe would release a commentary on AI, says something important.
AI appears to be the new golden calf we are all acknowledging, in some form or another.
Interesting you mention the golden calf, that was made from people's own jewelry, yet they worshipped it as if it were something outside them, greater than them.
I was the appointed scapegoat at a private religious school, hence the reference.
Does them being pre-columbian really add any value or validation to their opinions?
Like in the grand scheme of things?
There are lots of societies that have existed in their same location for much longer. But no one is out here getting quotes from the "Elder Brothers" in Jericho.
As a software engineer, I tried to think of the last time a small tribe located anywhere, decided to comment on an improved hash table, or compression algorithm, and it's a first for me.
I'd certainly be interested in insights from other ancient cultures.
This is fraud, and probably a crime.
Who gave these people the right to speak on behalf of "the Kogui people"? Nobody.
Even if the speaker were himself Kogui, he would only speak for himself. He wasn't an elected president or ambassador for the Kogui.
You've got an interesting point there, but can please make your substantive points more thoughtfully - without name-calling or fulmination? This is necessary so conversation can drift in a curious direction, not a furious one.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
(Your comment would be just fine without that first bit.)
We say it because we believe it to be logical and self-evident
exactly, and it has been brought up before. not in this form, not from this perspective, but anyone who spent a modicum of time to think about this, would or already did come to the same conclusion. anyone believing otherwise is deluding themselves.
AI is a reflection of humanity, and if we want AI to become better, then we ourselves need to become better. that's the only way out of this.
"AN URGENT MESSAGE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FROM THE KOGUI PEOPLE Assembled from the words of Mamo Vangelio Moscote Alberto and Saka Rosa Mamatacán Sauna of the Ezuama Mayor Kuamaka, Translated into Spanish by Jose Manuel Mamatacán,
English translation by Christian Horstmann.
We come from Gonawindua, la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the mountain in
Colombia which we call the heart of the world.
We are the Kággaba, whom you know as the Kogui.
We have lived here and cared for this mountain before there was a Colombia.
We have been here since the Mother gave us our beginning and conferred intelligence upon us.
We have come to speak to you about the intelligence you are building.
We do not come in opposition.
We come because we are concerned, and because we believe we have something to contribute.
Before anything can be said about artificial intelligence, we must say something about thought.
Before a thing exists as matter, it exists first in thought, and that thought is alive.
We call this living thought Aluna.
Your religion has described it as a spirit moving upon the face of the waters.
Perhaps your science would describe it as the quantum vacuum.
Aluna is how we express this type of idea.
Aluna is the cosmic water.
To us it is living thought: the place where a thing already is, before it takes form or is given mass.
Everything comes from there, without exception.
And in that thought is not only the shape of what a thing will be.
That thing is alive, because the universe as a whole is alive.
It is in Aluna that a thing receives its purpose, and its obligation to its existence.
So we say to you: artificial intelligence cannot be separated from the thought that is making it.
If that thought is born from concern for life, this technology can help protect life.
If it is born from ambition, from competition, from accumulation, from the desire to dominate, it will express and amplify those things.
Artificial intelligence is a mirror.
But a mirror that only reflects would be harmless.
This mirror has the potential to greatly magnify all that it reflects.
You are here asking yourselves how you can align artificial intelligence with human values.
We see that you are frightened of what may come of all this.
So we ask a question we believe is more fundamental than yours: what other values could artificial intelligence really have?
You are the only example it has.
What did you expect?
Whatever it becomes, it can only become that by passing through you.
> So we ask a question we believe is more fundamental than yours: what other values could artificial intelligence really have? > > You are the only example it has. > > What did you expect?
Who are these people that speak of humanity as “you”, as if they don’t belong to it (or, considering the tone of this message, believe themselves to be above it somehow)?
It's catering to this American esoteric view of thinking that indigenous peoples are some kind of magic elves or ents safeguarding the world since eternity in perfect harmony with nature and whatnot. It's weird but it's a new American religion. There is a need to imagine that some mirror world exists with pure hearted people somewhere else.
When I read that I assumed "you" meant the people building and training AI, not the whole of humanity. Doesn't mean I'm right, of course, but I wanted to offer that perspective.
Since I first read it in Spanish, I went back to read it in English and I still get my first interpretation.
In particular, "We have come to speak to you about the intelligence you are building." set the association in my head of "you == those building the AI"
Even twins may use the term "you" between each other.
In context, it appears that they are using "you" to mean the people and/or society that is creating artificial intelligence.
I had that thought. But upon further reading and re-reading and re-re-reading ...
... they do explicitly claim (at least) being part of a "whole":
But they do claim more of a "functional", de facto, separation. In that, they are unarguably correct.-We know you like to think that these machines can be taught from something other than human example, from goals you set for them, from their own processes, or from material they generate themselves.
You imagine that what comes out need not resemble you at all, as if this too were not a consequence of your actions and a reflection of your attitudes.
Human beings did this, and there is no other party responsible.
So the question only becomes more complex, starting with: which aspects of human thought have been placed inside this creation?
What components of your spiritual world now reside in it?
What of your ethics guide it?
What image of responsibility do your actions and policies give it to reflect back to the world?
Who is deciding this?
You will say that these machines have access to nearly everything humanity has recorded.
Texts, images, archives, centuries of writing.
You will say that extensive research is being done to establish what the best practices are.
We ask whether having access to information is the same as understanding.
Best practices according to whom?
And we ask whether you have considered what information is not in your archives.
Our knowledge was never written down.
It is held in a language, in a territory, in a practice in a place, informed by long experience of doing what must be done there.
It is transmitted by a young man being taught directly by an old one, learning by experience how he must conduct himself in the context of raw nature.
A machine can hold the recorded voice of that elder.
But that is a very different thing from millennia of generations handing down their knowledge directly, as the common experience of a verified practice.
It is very different from physically surviving on a mountain where there is no ambulance to retrieve you and no hospital to take you to.
We do not say this to present ourselves as mystical and enigmatic people.
We say it because we believe it to be logical and self-evident.
In our experience there are things that can only be known by living them, observing them across generations, and remaining in relationship with them.
No quantity of data reproduces that experience.
The information is missing not because it has not yet been gathered, but because it is not in a form that can be gathered.
It's interesting that you choose to violate the copyright on this text by reposting it here in full. Very interesting.
You should delete these comments, and apologize to the resort hotel that made it all up for the money.
Lol
Perhaps tangential but I wonder if their framing of “ambition” as a bad thing is a product of translation or their reality.
I think the point is having ambition but no purpose beyond the ambition itself. Money is the obvious example. Somebody wants to make lots of money. Okay, but why? The why there is what really matters, yet many never answer that. And so you end up in this sort of system where you have people chasing ever more zeroes on their bank account and not only doing nothing of much value with it, but actively causing chaos and destruction to achieve it. And why? There is no why - the money is the point in and of itself.
Like imagine shells were used as a currency in some isolated tribe and suddenly there were these people who'd just collect shells for endless hours each and every day, to go bury them in their hiding hole, only to wake up and do the exact same thing the next day, only occasionally trading some completely inconsequential part of their shell collection for food or whatever. We'd certainly pathologize it, yet that'd be far less neurotic than what we do in our society since shell collecting is harmless whereas many of the things we do in pursuit of shells are completely self destructive.
It's amazing the polarization in the comments here. What I'm sadly certain of is that the powerful people running the show will never in a billion years be able to make sense of the sentiment of TFA.
This is certainly one take. Urgent != important, however. You can call it however you want but I'm not going to stop using AI today or tomorrow after having skimmed this urgent message. Their open questions have wisdom.
The skimming makes me sad. Just read it.
I read the english version twice, and I simply don't see the profoundnes others see.
Obviously they have the same right to weigh in as everyone else, but I don't see anything new here.
edit: removed an unnecessarily mean part.
Their speech doesn't strike me as all that different from other religious texts like the Dao De Jing.
Fair point. It was mostly the part about linking the religious beliefs to "quantum" things that triggert that impression. I've removed it, it was unnecessarily mean.
I really can't imagine any of the absolute psychopaths running these "AI" companies reading this and going, "yeah, great ideas..." which is a disappointing.
I completely agree. And this may be the first time I'm interacting with a piece of a post on hacker news in this manner. If I had any form of social interaction credit and knew how to get people to read things and take them seriously, this would be the thing I would spend all of it on. The only way those kinds of people that you and I are talking about here would do anything is if they were permanently and instantly surrounded by people that say, "fucking pay attention to this"
I’d hope the people in charge of those companies aren’t wasting their time reading slop like this.
Did Claude write it for them?
Reads more like oai
Now I see the full picture! You're absolutely right, and that's on me.
This has about as much bearing on AI anything as a statement from some other cult about immortal soul and life beginning at conception has on biology of fetal development.
The appropriate response to both is: "lol"
I don't agree with the delivery. They muddy the message for the western audience by going after science in general. The way they contrast their values against AI, you could similarly contrast their values against any other civilization, modern or pre-industrial.
I believe the reason why they have to point at science is because they are often discredited because the knowledge they present is not backed up by papers but rather generational wisdom (they explain in the text how they do it).
> We have lived here and cared for this mountain before there was a Colombia.
So the authors of this “message” are simultaneously trying to claim the spiritual heritage of people who had no connection to the modern world at all, and commenting on the most modern phenomenon in existence.
I do wonder how they would react to a machine learning PhD telling them that he is concerned about their beliefs involving a mountain.
Heritage happens in the past. Modern phenomenon happen in the present. There is no reason someone could not have an ancient heritage and familiarity with modern phenomenon.
I'd like to see their position on just computers and the internet in general before taking any comments about AI. Maybe they just dislike everything tech anyway. Despite any good points, for example the Unabomber would also oppose AI, but he also opposed most technological progress. And they could be both right on the wider point also, but it's not worth the same if they'd say the same thing about most modern living.
I would ask you to please read it again and very deeply. Do not skim the words, do not skip over a sentence that you think is too wordy. They very very clearly state this in terms of what they think in the Internet. They do not oppose these things. This entire outreach from them seems to be quite literally and in their own words an elder family brother looking at a much larger family and trying to communicate how much danger is on the horizon for that family, which happens to include them.
Who is this person who considers himself an “elder family brother” to humanity as a whole? Imagine a technologist speaking in such terms; they’d get publicly crucified.
While I grant you that the authors don’t appear to express generic luddite sentiments, nothing in this letter suggests that their understanding of AI extends even a millimeter below the surface.
Seems like you're directing your counterargument at the speaker.
... which, does not - does it not? - preclude them having profound understanding of things -other- than AI, which might be nonetheless, deeply needed for those developing it. And, us all, I'd posit.-
Speaking to those trying to build the Artificial surrogate, I firmly believe they understand, experience and live by the natural one, and have done so for a long time.-
Don't focus on what upset you. Don't focus on your internal desire, maybe, to say that you require an authority. Read the words specifically on how humanity treats itself and its surrounding environment, and I guarantee you, you will see connections to just about every area of science and sociology and anything between, and you absolutely should. That is the point of this letter, and it is a subtle one, and it is an uncomfortable one for a lot of people, but it is a very valid point.
And I would absolutely disagree with you, by the way, because this is not so much a simple letter about "AI", but the fundamental way that it is being built and constructed and used by a massive part of this world. And, I would continue to disagree that they don't have anything that extends, as you said, below the surface. The way they describe the technology is actually much, much more factual and humanistically relevant than many people I've talked to that literally build these models. Just because you were able to glue things together and compute numbers, does not mean you understand the outcome of what you are doing. That is almost literally something that is said in this letter, and I really suggest you please try to read it again and understand where it is saying that, because I think there's a lot more you will be able to internally glean if you let the words about what it is saying about humans enter your brain.
> Read the words specifically on how humanity treats itself and its surrounding environment
I did read them. They sound incredibly generic to me, and actually more like a colonial parody of what tribespeople supposedly believe than like anything genuine.
... then I will be blunt, and this is coming from a completely random Internet person that you have no idea about anything whatsoever, but I absolutely think you need to do a much deeper dive on what you would call "a colonial parody of what tribespeople supposedly believe".
I do not believe you have actually sat with what it is saying, or with the concepts that have been talked about for many many years outside of this particular letter, are actually trying to get you to sit with.
This is not about beliefs of flows of water or connectedness of nature or anything that you would probably consider simply silly.
This is about the outreach of a completely separate way of life that is entirely aware of the current state of the world and the humans in it, and an attempt to bridge some sort of understanding and awareness of what needs to be dealt with as a collective.
They do not state anything clearly.
Clearly not the case if N > 0 people in this comment section have connected it to reality in their own form and to other sources.
I think you are internally convinced that it has nothing to say because you do not want it to have anything to say.
You would surely be insane to believe this claptrap, bro
Claptrap? Seriously?
This is a treatise on the nature of humanity, and whether or not you care about the way in which they're describing the nature of the planet and the cosmos, you clearly have done none of the labor of piecing apart someone's perspective on the nature of humanity that is very clearly evident in this writing.
TL;DR: what I got is that no they do not oppose technology per se, but they observe that how we use it is often very negative and destructive.
I can’t disagree with that part. We are a society full of angry unhappy people who like to break things. It’s deeply unhealthy.
Their view is that this grows out of our greed and imbalance, which demands eternal growth, which then when it runs into any limit reacts violently and aggressively.
This is where I stop entirely agreeing, though I don’t think it’s entirely wrong either. But I’d have to write a book for that.
In short I think there’s some truth here but there is also a lot more context and a lot more to it, and I’m not sure I come to exactly the same conclusions.
My problem is with the epistemic claim. They say their understanding of mind and the cosmos is verified, tested through repetition and consultation over centuries. Sure, but a long, stable run for one small society in one mountain range is still a single data point. It proves their way works for them, there. It doesn't prove it scales to 8 billion people, and it doesn't tell us anything reliable about physics or consciousness.
To be fair, they do say they aren't telling anyone how to live. But calling yourselves the Elder Brother and telling the rest of the world it needs your help is a claim to authority. So what earns it? Being around a long time and getting a UNESCO listing isn't the same thing as predictive power.
Side note: I'm fairly certain parts of the English were polished by an LLM. Could just be the translation, but it reads that way.
Slop
The University of Oxford has been around longer than the Kogui people. And have contributed much more for the improvements of society.
Source?
So I tried to ask the new Siri AI to translate and summarize the page for me but it says it can only summarize what it sees on the screen. Yet it can search through my entire email, messages, photos, and files?
You definitely need to read it and not have AI summarize. Whether you agree with it or not, taking the pause to deeply consider is healthy.
The English version is found in the second half of the page
I find the irony of this comment overwhelming. I suspect one day we will be asking AI to summarize the smell of the forest, and the beauty of a wildflower meadow, because ain't nobody got time for that.
Do yourself a favor and just read it. Please, please, for the sake of some other random human being on the planet asking you directly, just read the entire thing. Do not have it summarize anything for you, and walk into it, knowing that you are likely to not expect what it is saying, and that it very well may be contrary to a lot of the things that you already think ahead of time. Just read it. Please.
I started reading it and did myself a favor by stopping. It seems more like some stream of consciousness blathering rather than something I devote my time to.
Perhaps you would find some growth in expanding what you consider worthy of your time, and sharpening what you consider "stream of consciousness blathering."
It's a letter. Letters are streams of consciousness. There's nothing here that's blathering.